The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

by Jonathan Haidt

The main psychiatric category here is called major depressive disorder (MDD). Its two key symptoms are depressed mood (feeling sad, empty, hopeless) and a loss of interest or pleasure in most or all activities.17 “How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, seem to me all the uses of this world,” said Hamlet,18 immediately after lamenting God’s prohibition against “self-slaughter.” For a diagnosis of MDD, these symptoms must be consistently present for at least two weeks. They are often accompanied by physical symptoms, including significant weight loss or weight gain, sleeping far less or far more than normal, and fatigue. They are also accompanied by disordered thinking, including an inability to concentrate, dwelling on one’s transgressions or failings (causing feelings of guilt) and the many cognitive distortions that CBT tries to counteract. People experiencing a depressive disorder are likely to think about suicide because it feels like their current suffering will never end, and death is an end.